le double Avatar

Of Sri Aurobindo (15-08-1872 to 05-12-1950) we have only a chance series of formal portraits and incidental snapshots of his successive stages until his settling in Pondicherry in the 1910s – from a small schoolboy and a student to a tutor, a writer and a revolutionary – besides the dozen or so photographs taken in his room in April 1950. Of the Mother, we have more of the corresponding periods before She eventually settled in Pondicherry in 1920 – from a little girl to a young artist and mother, an occultist and a seer -; then we have nothing at all until 1950, except one poor snapshot of Her coming out of the Ashram building to reach a waiting car, clad and veiled with Her sari, which may have been taken in the 1940s. But then, once She had agreed to those photographs of Them being taken in 1950, there was no stopping Her disciples and devotees, after His withdrawal, to build up a treasure of pictures of Her throughout the 23 years She remained alive to continue Their work. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have brought to Their yogic task the very quintessence of human civilization; between Them and together They were able to combine the highest and most lucid intellectual and philosophical enquiry with the deepest and most illumined occult knowledge, the most exhaustive appreciation of the cultures of East and West and the profoundest and most refined artistic sense with the widest and most universal understanding of all spiritual paths. Their progress shattered boundaries and beliefs and not only heralded but cleaved the way for the next evolutionary stage – the being and consciousness that are to replace mind at the helm. In this sense They stand together as the Avatar – the One who incarnates to announce and demonstrate the very spirit and mode of the coming age. *

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They have left such a considerable amount of written and recorded words that one may spend a whole lifetime studying and absorbing their contents,

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